Over the years, historians have examined the history of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from different vantage points, including security (Eckart Conze, Die Suche nach Sicherheit [2009]) or fear (Frank Biess, Republik der Angst [2019]/German Angst [2020]). With his new book, William Glenn Gray makes a significant contribution to this growing body of work. Focusing on the period from 1963 to 1975, Trading Power examines the emergence of the FRG as a global player in the world economy and presents the reader with “an integrated view of major problems facing Bonn at any time” (5). Here, the particular focus lies in a “learning process” (2) that the consecutive governments under Konrad Adenauer, Ludwig Erhard, Kurt Georg Kiesinger, and Willy Brandt underwent to establish the FRG as a global “trading power.”
In fourteen chronological chapters, Gray covers key episodes of this learning experience, including both familiar areas such as transatlantic and Franco-German relations as well as tension between Atlanticists and Gaullists, Ostpolitik, or the role of the Deutsche Mark in forging the FRG's role as a leading export nation, as well as lesser-known (yet no less important) facets such as West German arms exports or Brazilian-German relations. Even where Gray addresses well-researched themes like 1968 as the year of global student and antiwar protests, he offers novel interpretations. In this particular case, the author observes that “what stood out at the time was Germany's remarkable stability” (196). In addition, Trading Power addresses issues off the beaten path, such as controversial weapons sales to the Greek military dictatorship and the Nigerian government during Kiesinger's tenure as chancellor or Bonn's quest to establish the German PAL over the French SECAM system as the main television standard in Europe.
As a result, Trading Power is not an exercise in orthodox diplomatic history but “rather a study of Germany in the wider world,” as Gray explains in the introduction (5). That the book is based on multi-archival research in Germany, the United States, and the United Kingdom underscores this point. Moreover, it relies on a large number of relevant printed sources and key historiography in English, German, and French. Throughout, the author places key episodes and moments in the period from 1963 to 1975 within their wider international and global contexts, providing the reader with in-depth analyses of key policy decisions by the West German government or the Bundesbank, and their reception in Europe and beyond. Given the crucial role that Gray ascribes to Franco-West German relations in the process of the FRG becoming a trading power, it seems a little odd though that the author did not carry out more sustained research in French archives to explore the French side in more depth.
Three particular strengths of Trading Power's methodology deserve mention here. The fact that the author applies a constructivist approach to international relations is highly commendable, because it allows him to give adequate attention to soft power as a major force shaping the international system. A second strength relates to the fact that Trading Power does not exclusively deal with various chancellors and foreign ministers but “also highlights the goals and priorities of prominent figures across a range of West German institutions” (5). For example, the reader learns about Katharina Focke, a lobbyist for European integration who was appointed to Brandt's Chancellor's Office in an otherwise male-dominated government apparatus. Similarly, Gray skilfully uses Erhard Eppler, who served as Minister for Development Aid from 1968 to 1974, to open the chapter on the Brandt government's engagement with the Global South.
Finally, Gray refrains from delivering a teleological reading backwards of the history of the Bonn Republic as a simplistic success story. Instead, he problematizes controversial aspects and episodes in that crucial period of West German history from 1963 to 1975. He exposes some of the weaknesses of Willy Brandt and Egon Bahr's Ostpolitik, or the continuities between the Third Reich and the Federal Republic through senior political decisionmakers like Chancellor Kurt Georg Kiesinger, for example. Another area of great ambivalence within the history of the FRG concerned Bonn's hesitancy to ratify the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty due to its own ambitions to become a nuclear weapons power. Likewise, the government under Chancellor Willy Brandt – commonly associated with Ostpolitik and Cold War détente – displayed a high level of ambivalence when it came to arms exports. “Brandt's government had little use for boycotts and embargoes; it viewed trade as an inherently positive activity that bound the world more closely together,” as Gray observes (311).
Twenty years after the publication of his seminal study, Germany's Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949-1969 (2003), William Glenn Gray has written another major study of the foreign relations of the Bonn Republic. In years to come, Trading Power is set to become a key text for researchers and students of West German history. In light of Chancellor Olaf Scholz recently proclaimed Zeitenwende, a historic turning point away from a passive toward a more active defence policy, Trading Power provides important historical lessons that are relevant to current political debates in the Berlin Republic.
